Vimeo’s ordering up its first batch of original content for its on-demand service in the form of six episodes of the hilarious web series High Maintenance . No word on how much individual episodes will cost. Read more…
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Vimeo’s ordering up its first batch of original content for its on-demand service in the form of six
The cup of joe you get from those pod-based instant coffee machines like the Keurig might not be the best you can find, but they sure are convenient. And while instant soup is a logical next step for pod-based dining, the makers of the Flatev have actually found a way to churn out fresh, warm tortillas from a machine on your counter. The future is delicious. Read more…
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A Keurig Machine For Tortillas. Repeat: A KEURIG MACHINE FOR TORTILLAS
Material scientists have watched crystals grow atom-by-atom for the first time —which will allow incredibly fine-grained control of how their microscopic structures are grown in the future. Read more…
Few things in this world are as moving as a potent mix of nostalgia and passion. Don’t just take my word for it: just look at the more than 22, 000 people who backed LeVar Burton’s vision of bringing Reading Rainbow to the web on Kickstarter. That’s more than a million dollars raised in less than a day, and it’s all to help kids realize that theeeeeey can be anythiiiiiiiiing . This isn’t the first time Reading Rainbow has been brought back to life since it left public airwaves in 2009 — Burton and company launched a Reading Rainbow iPad app nearly two years ago. The real issue here is access. Wanting to teach kids the joy of reading is a noble goal, but affecting change on a wider scale requires more than just hardware designed in California and assembled in China. Now that the team has shattered its funding goal, they’re going to make the books and “video field trips” from the app available on the web, and craft a version specifically meant for classrooms. Alas, Reading Rainbow’s public television days have long since passed, so you’ll actually have to pay a subscription fee for all that fine content. LeVar’s looking out for the disadvantaged too, though — the team plans to make that web version available for free in underprivileged schools. Perhaps the best part of the entire campaign (erm, besides getting kids excited about books)? All the Star Trek backer goodies Burton has on offer. On the off-chance you’ve got $10, 000 burning a hole in your wallet, you’ll be able to don Burton’s straight-from-the-set VISOR from Star Trek: The Next Generation (and without the risk of being called to Engineering to diagnose a warp core hiccup). Comments Source: Kickstarter
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Backers pledge over $1 million to bring Reading Rainbow to the web
Water might be good for our bodies, but it’s terrible for our stuff. Our smartphones, the walls in our home, the precious documents we’re carrying—water can ruin all of it. So when a material is created that can repel water so perfectly that whatever it covers essentially never gets wet, we take notice. This kind of material is called superhydrophobic. That means that water droplets remain in their spherical shape, sit on top of the material, and then roll off of it like pearls from a necklace. The droplets never really touch the material in the first place. Check out the photo below. The angle between the bottom of the droplet sphere and the surface will be more than 120 degrees. If it were 180 degrees the droplet would not touch the surface. There have been many variations of superhydrophobic materials and most involve embedding structures within the material that prevent the water from coming into contact. For instance in a recent study researchers from Brigham Young University used material that either had microscopic long ridges or posts (see photos below) that prevented the droplet from penetrating through the fibers. (more…)
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Superhydrophobia: Breakthroughs in Next-Level Waterproofing
The current trend in fridge innovation involves adding extra doors, built-in soda dispensers, and pointless touchscreens. So it’s refreshing when a company like Mitsubishi brings a truly unique advancement to its new refrigerators in the form of a freezer drawer that chills food to three degrees below freezing , without actually freezing it. Read more…
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This Supercooling Fridge Chills Food To Sub-Zero Without Freezing It
This photonic lattice created at Sandia National Laboratories acts like a crystal in guiding light because of its tiny, regularly placed silicon “logs.” Japanese researchers have shown how to use photonic crystals like this as optical RAM. Sandia National Labs Most high-speed networking is done using optical fibers. The hardware on each end of these fibers has to convert the optical signals to electronic ones in order to figure out a packet’s destination and will often return it to optical form before sending it on toward its destination. Researchers at the Japanese telecom NTT find all that converting a bit wasteful and are working on ways to avoid it. They’ve recently published a paper that includes a description of a working 115-bit optical Random Access Memory device, made of a carefully structured series of photonic crystals, each of which can store light of a different wavelength. Photonic crystals are made of layered semiconductors, with the precise structure (the thickness and spacing of the layers) determining how they interact with light—it’s possible to make photonic crystals that selectively block or transmit a narrow frequency range. Read 8 remaining paragraphs | Comments
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Photonic crystals used to make optical RAM
Teeth don’t grow back, as your dentist might like to remind you while revving up the drill for a root canal. But scientists have now found a way to regenerate dentin , the hard stuff in the middle of the tooth, right in the mouth. It’s surprisingly simple, too—all it takes is a blast of laser. Read more…
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A Simple Blast of Laser Could Help Your Teeth Grow Back
Apple has indeed purchased Beats, which includes both Beats Audio hardware and Beats Music, the streaming radio service that was founded by rapper Dr. Dre and longtime music industry exec Jimmy Iovine. The deal was reported to be in the works earlier this month, and was said to be worth an estimated $3.2 billion at the time, thought a recent New York Post report said it was cut to $3 billion… Read More
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Apple Buys Beats Electronics For $3B
In Los Angeles, the theft of computers from a county contractor’s office that contained personal data for over 342, 000 patients has led to a call for tighter security. Read the rest
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Massive theft of medical data in LA sparks new security moves